I30 Films for Women Made by Women 7

Dance, Girls, Dance

OMMUNITIES OF WOMEN function, in Arzner's career as well as in her Cfilms, as perhaps the most consistent and important feature. In this chapter I turn to the two films which epitomize the cinematic implications of those communities. The title of this chapter is taken from what is undoubtedly Arzner's best-known film, Dance) Girl, Dance. l chose this title not only be­ cause the 1940 film is so important to any discussion of the female world cen­ tral to Arzner's work, but also because of the importance of dance in Arzner's work. It is no coincidence that the two films that explore in detail the com­ plexities of female communities are also those in which dance acquires crucial symbolic and narrative significance. To be sure, dance functions quite differently in the two films. In The Wild Party, social dancing and festivities define the changing dimensions of the re­ lationships of the women to each other, to men, and to the world at large. Figures 47 and 48. On the set of Craig)s Wife, John Boles and Rosalind Russell Dance, Girl, Dance, of course, is more explicitly concerned with dance as a oose (Figure 47), and their pose is imitated by Boles and Arzner (Figure 48). MOMA profession, as it traces the divergent and intersecting careers of two different " "-~rhive. dancers with different aspirations. Nonetheless, both films share a preoccupa­ tion with dance as it embodies the relationship between the private and the - ...J1;,e. Whatever else one public spheres, and as it combines women's desires for artistic expression and -...... Bar- community. In addition, the two films are preoccupied with what I will call heterosocial 11,l'II and homosocial worlds, that is, with the shifts from modes of interaction and community based on opposite-sex, versus same-sex, relationships. I have noted that, frequently in Arzner's films, the development of heterosexual romance intrudes upon all-female worlds, and that while the films often conclude with the requisite happy couple, such conclusions seem somewhat fragile in regard to the amount of time and energy devoted, screen-wise, to the female worlds. The Wild Party and Dance, Girl, Dance are the boldest demonstrations of this process. The relationship between homosocial and heterosocial worlds is not just a thematic preoccupation with stylistic effects in Arzner's work. One of the most interesting historical shifts in twentieth-century America was the change, for women, from a public sphere organized largely in homosocial terms to one de­ pendent on heterosocial interaction.' Additionally, this shift was crucial to the

I3I I32 Films for Women Made by Women Dance) Girls) Dance I33 lives of women whose emotional and affective lives were spent in the company of other women. If, in nineteenth-century America, romantic friendships be­ tween women were an accepted fact of life, with the passage of time such re­ lationships would be classified as pathological, as detrimental to so-called nor­ mal heterosexual development. Throughout the early decades of the twentieth century the term "lesbian" was used increasingly as a mark of illness, of dis­ ease.2 Neither of the two films under consideration here are concerned, explic­ itly, with lesbianism ( although one character in Dance, Girl, Dance is the most obvious butch in Arzner's work). However, both films negotiate the complex implications, visual and narrative as well as thematic and emotional, of women together.

The Wild Party ( 1929)

Arzner's work with Clara Bow was one of the most successful collabora­ tions of her career. While Bow was one of the most gifted performers of the 1920s, her films with Arzner ( Get Your Man [192 7] and The Wild Party [ 1929J showcase her abilities remarkably well. The actress was nervous about the com­ ing of sound film, and there are some moments in The Wild Party when her Brooklyn accent overpowers her; but, on the whole, her transition to talking pictures was a success. The Wild Party takes a community of women as its explicit starting point: Figure 49. Helen (Shirley O'Hara) and Stella (Clara Bow) in The Wild Party, 1929. the film opens in 1930 in a Winston' College dormitory room, with Stella Ames MOMA Film Stills Archive. (Bow) and a group of girlfriends giggling and chatting about their club-the Hard Boiled Maidens. The women are uniformly attractive, slender, and fash­ ionable, but a gradual contrast is introduced in two ways-with the arrival of a candidate. Under Stella's tutelage, Helen begins to socialize more, and she Helen, Stella's best friend, who is studious and serious (suggested by her glasses eventually meets George, a young man to whom she is attracted. At a party, and her sensible bathrobe); and later, with the appearance of James "Gil" Gil­ Helen spends the night on the beach with her new love, thus breaking college more, a new professor of anthropology. rules. If this transgression is discovered, she risks losing the scholarship. Un­ Stella tells her girlfriends of how, when she and Helen were sharing a sleep· fortunately, Helen writes to George and alludes to the night on the beach. The ing berth on the train returning to Winston College, she got up at night for a letter is found by a snoopy coed who passes it along to the college authorities. drink and returned to the berth, chilly, and suggested to Helen that they sleep Pretending to be the author of the letter, Stella takes the blame on Helen's ,.,,[ "spoon fashion" to keep warm. A male voice asks her who invited her in, and behalf, and her loyalty to her friend coexists in the film with her developing ,,,,! Stella is shocked to discover that she has entered the wrong compartment. The romance with Gil. The scene in which Stella finds Helen in George's arms is l•l'i next morning, when Stella and Helen go to the dining car, Stella finds a spoon striking for the emphasis, visual as well as narrative, on the bond between the "' with a note from the man, reminding her of the dangers of spoonir~.g.As "co­ two women. Andrea Weiss, commenting on the "subtextual lesbian dynamic" incidence" would have it, the man is, of course, the new professor, alld the film of the film, describes the sce.p.eas follows: "George tries to reassure Stella that traces the predictable yet somewhat unusual courtship of Stella and Gil. he loves Helen and would not take advantage of her, but he misunderstands the The predictability of their pairing is undercut by the emphasis on Stella's cause of Stella's alarm. She starts to cry and responds, 'I'm jealous, you see, I friendship with Helen. The budding relationship between Gil and Stella is by love Helen too!' In this shot Helen moves from George's to Stella's arms, and no means the only narrative development in The Wild Party. The principal sub· the camera moves to exile George from the frame while the two women ro­ plot of the film concerns the coveted alumnae scholarship, for which Helen is mantically embrace. "3 I34 Films for ™1men Made by Women Dance, Girls, Dance 135

If the hard-boiled maidens are largely and notoriously interchangeable, sented in a hilarious shot, in which the crossed legs of the women in the class­ Stella and Helen's friendship is founded upon their differences. Stella-true to room form a virtual wall framing his entry. The effect is as much mockery of the Clara Bow persona-is bubbly and energetic, while Helen is shy and re­ his stodginess as their frivolity. served; Stella is not a serious student, but Helen is regarded as the best student Another kind of opposition between two different kinds of display occurs at the college. The female bond to which principal attention is drawn in the when Stella and three of her friends are forbidden to enter the "costume," a film is a bond based on difference as much as similarity. In this respect, the dance which is similar, the film's titles inform us, to a male stag party. A shot developing relationship between Gil, the serious scholar, and Stella takes as its of the ballroom shows a sea of women's legs, adorned in a variety of different model the friendship we have already seen between the two young women. costumes- male as well as female, contemporary as well as historical. The effect The Wild Party develops according to a series of oppositions-fun versus is carnivalesque, a utopian topsy-turvy world where gender and identity are seriousness, frivolity versus intellect, laughter versus severity. To some extent, performed, engaged with in playful terms. Yet Stella and her friends disrupt the the most extreme opposition in the film is between Gil and Stella, which is, event. They are dressed as chorines, and after they take off their identical fur obviously, a gender opposition as well. But the oppositions are also embodied coats to reveal skimpy (and identical) costumes, with their bare legs exposed, in Stella and Helen's friendship, and as a result the gender opposition is never their attempt to enter the ballroom as a makeshift chorus line is thwarted by so absolute, and the relegation of the friendship subplot to secondary status one of their classmates-who is dressed as a shepherdess. The forbidden entry never so total, as one might expect. functions in two different ways. First, their clothing is too revealing and their Indeed, it is not even entirely appropriate to describe the friendship be­ costumes too provocative, thus connoting a censorship of anything so explic­ tween the young women as a "subplot" to The Wild Party, since the female itly sexual. But second, this scene, in combination with the scene that follows, friendship and the heterosexual romance are completely intertwined. Stella is suggests that in this all female world, there is, rather, no place for the classical willing to give up everything, her romance with Gil in particular, in order to representation of women as objects of the male gaze. It is possible to read the save Helen's chances of winning the scholarship. Thus, loyalty to her friend forbidden entry, in other words, in two opposing ways- as a repression of sexu­ comes before romance. Ironically-and predictably-it is just this decision ality, or, conversely, as a refusal of stereotypical associations of women with which sparks the professor's decision to follow Stella when she is suspended for sexual objectification. the previously mentioned transgression. Not only does her loyalty demonstrate Once the girlfriends are forced to leave, they go to a road-house. Here, that she is far more mature than he had acknowledged, but also and especially their playfulness and costume meet with a very different kind of response: a it makes him realize that he doesn't really want to be in a university setting; group of male customers who take their appearances all too literally, forcing rather, he wants to do fieldwork. Hence, at the conclusion of the film, Stella their attentions on the girls. At the costume, the costumes of Stella and her and Gil are preparing for a future "in the jungle." friends stood in contrast to those of the other women, and that contrast was

The Wild Party never seems to be quite certain whether the college setting underscored humorously by Little Bo Peep telling Stella and her pals to leave. 'I is a utopian or a claustrophobicenvironment, particularlygiven Gil's final words There is little humor in the roadhouse scene. It is shot in the familiar terms of ' about the frustration of teaching students who aren't interested in the material. shot reverse shot, where the men leer and the women are leered at. What was One senses that Gil's change of heart is necessary for the requisite happy end­ playful in the previous scene here becomes dangerous. Stella attempts once ing, since earlier in the film he had made an impassioned speech to Stella about again to perform-in this case, to pretend that she is genuinely interested in ,1,11 the sacrifices made by women of earlier generations so that women of her gen­ one of the men, so as to give her friends room to leave- but the act works only ,,,d eration could go to college. In general, then, the way the college environment to a point. She manages to get her girlfriends out of the bar, but the men persist, ,,,1,:I is presented throughout the film leans far more toward a utopian view, for the a fight breaks out, and Stella is left behind, forced into a car with three men. I"' college provides the support and encouragement of a female community. Gil, out for an evening stroll, saves the day, protecting Stella and fighting off As noted, dramatic opposition does not require male/female difference in the three drunken men. Their romance begins with a passionate kiss, after Gil the film, as one usually expects in classical Hollywood films. Stella and Helen's has warded off the danger of the "wild party." friendship is nurtured as much by their differences as by their similarities. And Helen is conspicuously absent from these scenes, but Stella takes her along when the film does portray male/female difference, it is less a function of the to another dance which stands in sharp contrast to the earlier costume. Whereas typical (for Hollywood, that is) man as subject/woman as object dichotomy. the guests at the previous dance were all women, this is a dance for both men For example, the professor's first meeting with a classroom full of coeds is pre- and women. The men dress alike and the women dress alike in the uniforms of r36 Films for Wiimen Made by Wiimen Dance, Girls, Dance I37 formal attire. Here, then, a symmetry of identical opposites occurs, unlike the The book covers a fairly wide range of the "psychoses" produced by an all­ costume, where a more frenzied anarchic atmosphere prevailed. There is a kind female environment, virtually all of them having to do with sex. As in Arzner's of boring predictability to the dance, broken only when an obnoxious drunken film, there is variation among the women, but the variation is decidedly down­ man makes unwanted advances to Helen. Interestingly, Stella and her friends played by the fact that they all have distorted attitudes toward and excessive are here entirely successful in "performing" him away; they feign interest in preoccupations with sex. For the most part, the sex in question concerns sex him, and then spin him furiously until he veers, out of control, away from the with men. A notable exl:eption occurs in the minor character of Olga, who is ballroom. In this space of heterosexual coupling, in other words, the women introduced early in the novel, only to disappear for the bulk of it and reappear exercise far more control than they did in the roadhouse. The confines of the quickly at the conclusion. Olga has a crush on Verity, a freshman, who is soon college offer the women control over the rituals of heterosexual courtship, a taken under the wing of the college girls who belong to the group, called the control not available to them once they leave the safe space of the college for "Hard-Boiled Virgins" (rather than maidens, as in the film). 5 Verity is innocent, the roadhouse. and a significant development of the novel is her introduction to romance via This dance marks an obvious change in Helen, who for once is portrayed the tutelage of her fellow "virgins." She has been asked to room with Olga; without her eyeglasses and in a dress quite similar to those worn by the other she is uncomfortable with her, but she doesn't understand why. Sylvia ("Stella" women. This is also the fateful night when she falls in love with George and, in the film) and Starr, the hard-boiled virgins, do. When Verity says of Olga's without realizing it, they spend the entire night talking on the beach. Stella's invitation to room with her, "I almost feel as if I'd been asked to room with discovery of them plays upon the changing dimensions of the two women's a man," the "two older girls exchanged looks." 6 relationship, because she immediately assumes a protective role vis-i-vis Helen, Olga persists in her pursuit of Verity, sending her flowers and inviting her just as Gil did vis-a-vis her during the roadhouse incident, a role that climaxes to her family's home for vacation. Sylvia makes explicit the difference between with Stella's decision to put her friendship with Helen before her romance with Olga and themselves: "It ill beseems a hard-boiled virgin ... to go in for Gil. Initially, Stella is shocked when she discovers Helen and George, and she schoolgirl crush stuff. You're in college now, kid." 7 Once the hard-boiled vir­ immediately assumes the worst-an assumption echoed by George, who tells gins have thus dismissed Olga and her supposed "school-girl crush" syndrome, Stella that she is right to assume the worst of men most of the time, just not the novel abandons her as well, only to have her reappear briefly at the conclu­ this time. sion, which takes place a year later at the beginning of a new fall term. Olga In the end, Stella gets her man but not college, which Gil assures her will has spread a rumor that Verity will not return to school, and Starr reacts in a not offer educational opportunities to equal those of the jungle, while Helen voice "fiery with scorn." As if to make absolutely explicit the pathology of one gets her alumnae award and presumably keeps George as well. In the process, like Olga, she says: "You know how that kind are when they turn on any one. "8 the film enacts a fantasy whereby the realms of female friendship and hetero­ One of the most obvious aims of Unforbidden Fruit is to titillate the reader sexual romance are not only compatible, but necessarily intertwined. The im­ with tales of female sexual independence run amok. While the novel focusses portance of such a dynamic co-existence cannot be overemphasized, particu­ largely on illicit heterosexual behavior, the "schoolgirl crush" of Olga obviously larly since in this respect the film departs sharply from the novel, Unforbidden is also, if more briefly, pathologized. To be sure, the young women in the novel Fruit, by Warner Fabian, upon which it was based. Fabian was a popular writer are not presented as particularly glowing advertisements for heterosexuality, but in the 1920s, and his novel Flaming Youth ( also made into a successful film it is not heterosexuality which comes in for scorn (as lesbianism does), but rather featuring Colleen Moore) was considered the quintessential flapper novel. female autonomy and independence. In the concluding pages of the novel, In many ways E. Lloyd Sheldon's adaptation of the novel for the screen is Fabian has one of his heroines wonder about the "disrupting, commanding literal; large chunks of dialogue are lifted directly from the novel, for instance. impulse which had swept her companions before it like a conquering wave"; But where the film and the novel differ is in the treatment of the relationship and two causal possibilities are offered, the "superfeminized environment" of between "romantic friendships" among women and heterosexual romance. the women's college, or the tendency of post-adolescent girls to develop "a sort Fabian's novel, published in 1928, is a stunning example of the supposed "dan­ of mob-psychology of self-recognition and self-realization. "9 gers" of romantic friendship, functioning as a warning of what communities To be sure, there are many more characters and many more plots and sub­ of women can create. In his preface to the novel, Fabian remarks upon the plots in Fabian's novel than in Arzner's film, but in most cases the different "peculiar atmosphere of compressed femininity which produces an intellectual characters of the novel are condensed into filmic characters.10 Olga is banished and social reaction not unlike the prison psychosis of our penal institutions. "4 from the film, as are any accompanying tendencies to portray intense female Films for Women Made by l¾men r38 Dance, Girls, Dance I39 friendships as perverse or resolutely opposed to "normal" femininity. In addi­ ship.' 4 I believe that the easiest way to interpret her reaction is through the tion, The Wild Party takes a decidedly different view of Stella's friendship with ubiquitous closet, i.e., through the assumption that Arzner separated her life Helen and her motivation for presenting Stella's letters to George as her own. from her films, and that to read lesbianism wherever two women share closeness In the novel, Sylvia certainly wants to protect her friend, but throughout the and intimacy is to violate that separation. While this may well be the case, when novel any sense of morality is a function of men-the professor, in particular; one reads The Wild Party in relationship to Fabian's novel, another response to hence, after Sylvia leaves, she wants the professor to tell her she did the right Arzner's denial emerges. In eliminating the lesbian character, The Wild Party thing. In other words, her protection of her friend is as much a function of eliminated the pathologizing view of lesbianism present in the novel. The world her attachment to the professor as to her girlfriend. of female friendship that is celebrated in the film may deny any explicit lesbian The film establishes no such rigid demarcations. While the film ends, as one content, but it also denies any representation of lesbianism as a disease. I am might expect, on a more cheerful note than the novel ( in which the women are not trying to defend the closet here, but rather to suggest that the kinds of pretty much condemned to sterile lives), I see this as less the legendary need of subversions that Arzner performed during her career need to be seen in specific Hollywood to sentimentalize its stories than one more sign of the profound contexts. In the present example, Arzner's film may not equate female friend­ revision of Fabian's novel that occurs in the film. Ultimately, Unforbidden Fruit ship with lesbianism, but it does refuse to validate the view, increasingly popular portrays all female friendship as pathological. By establishing a rigid line be­ (as Fabian's novel makes clear) during her lifetime, that there is anything un­ tween homosocial and heterosocial worlds, by vilifying female autonomy, and healthy, immoral, or otherwise lacking in intense female bonds. by singling out "romantic friendships" for particular scorn, the novel serves an ideological function common in early-twentieth-century popular literature.n Dance, Girl, Dance ( 1940) The film, on the other hand, not only refuses any such rigid line between nor­ mal and pathological behavior, but also celebrates the female world of love and Two forms of dance are contrasted in The Wild Party- one, the "cos­ ritual. 12 tume," where the women create a carnivalesque atmosphere, which is disrupted The screen persona of Clara Bow is also significant in the rereading of by the stereotypically sexualized chorus girls played by Stella and her pals; the Fabian's novel. Bow was Paramount's most successful commodity, and she was second, the formal dance of rigid gender dichotomy, also disrupted by Stella regarded as the quintessential woman of the decade- modern, sexually inde­ and her friends' clismissal of a drunken guest. Certainly, this contrast conveys pendent, and sexually available. The combination of Warner Fabian and Clara a sense of opposite worlds, that is, an all-female world versus a coupled world Bow seemed a perfect match, because Fabian's earlier novel, Flaming Youth, had of men and women. But Stella and the "hardboiled maidens" are never totally been the basis for what was then the ultimate flapper film, and one of Bow's at ease in either world, and dance functions in the film to suggest that gender most successful screen incarnations was as the "It" girl in It. "It" referred to is performed as muth as it is assumed "naturally." In Dance, Girl, Dance, it sex appeal, specifically to a kind of animal magnetism to attract the opposite performs a much more explicit function. Here, radically different kinds of dance sex, and the film It makes the point, indirectly but obviously, that those with are juxtaposed to suggest the different relationships between women and per­ "it" are resolutely heterosexual ( for example, a man coded as gay wonders why formance. he doesn't have "it"). Clara Bow's well-publicized affairs offscreen also contrib­ Dance, Girl] Dance is, today, the best-known of Arzner's films, and it has uted to her role as a sex symbol ( eventually the affairs caused serious damage become something of a classic in feminist film studies.'' Since 1970s film theory to her career)." The Wild Party certainly plays on Bow's status as the "It" girl, developed an analysis of cinema based on the way in which the look functioned but it also redefines "it" as a quality informed by close bonds between women. as the quintessence of power-cinematic and narrative, as well as sexual-the If "it" ( as heterosexual sex appeal) was the inspiration behind It, then "it" also scene which has drawn the most attention in the film occurs when a female propels the plot in The Wild Party, but redefined as the erotic component in performer turns to her audience and tells them how she sees them. 16 This scene friendships between women, specifically the magnetic attraction between Stella in Arzner's film functioned both as a summary of the limitations of the classical and Helen. Hollywood cinema (where woman was the object of the male look) and an Someone once suggested to Arzner that the friendship between Stella and indication of what would be unique and specific to women's cinema (a "return" Helen in the film had "lesbian undertones." Arzner reacted very negatively to of the look, and an attendant critique of the assumptions of classical film nar­ the suggestion and said that lesbianism was a ridiculous tag to put on a friend- rative). I40 Films for Women Made by i¼men Dance, Girls, Dance I4I

It does not require too much imagination to see why the "look" would be so important to the analysis of the cinema, since film is primarily a visual me­ dium that relies upon the engagement of the look of the spectator. What was particular to 1970s film theory was the understanding of the look as a form of authority and power, and what was particular to 1970s feminist film theory was the insistence upon the gendered quality of the authority and power of the look. For feminist film theorists, the classical Hollywood cinema offered a range of scenarios with man as the subject of the look, woman as its object. For example, shot reverse shot structures of dialogues between men and women may subtly establish the woman as the object of the gaze by portraying her in more extreme close-ups, or with the male's voice given more screen time. Lit­ eral performances staged within films more often than not define men as on­ lookers and women as performersP Dance, Girl, Dance was considered unique for its demonstration of the process, naturalized in other films, whereby women are made objects of the male gaze, as well as for its critique of this objectifica­ tion. While many of Arzner's films do indeed revise and challenge the assump­ tions of classical film, I think it is a mistake to focus exclusively on the "return of the look," particularly since such an approach focusses necessarily on .the relationship between male voyeur and female object of the look. Where Arz­ ner's films are most challenging is not in a reversal of the male subject/female object dichotomy, but in bracketing the dichotomy itself and therefore extend­ ing the look beyond the power of the male. We have seen an explicit repre­ sentation of this process in Nana, where Nana's performance is shaped by re­ action shots from both men and women. This is not to say that the look is not important in Arzner's work, but rather that it functions in a wide range of ways that do not always neatly fit the parameters of contemporary film theory. The plot of Dance, Girl, Dance concerns the differing paths to success for Bubbles (Lucille Ball) and Judy (Maureen O'Hara), both members of a dance troupe led by Madame Basilova (Maria Ouspenskaya). The dance troupe per­ forms vaudeville-style numbers in bars and nightclubs, much to the chagrin of Basilova (who bemoans her status as a "flesh pedcller"). Bubbles has "oomph," a kind of dancer's version of "it," and eventually she leaves the troupe and enthusiastically pursues a career as "Tiger Lily White." Judy, in contrast, is a Figure 50. Dorothy Arzner and Lucille Ball on the set of Dance, Girl, Dance serious student of ballet, and the protegee of Basilova. However, it is Bubbles (1940). Arts Library-Special Collections, University Research Library, UCLA. who gets the jobs, and she arranges for Judy to be hired as her "stooge," i.e., as a classical dancer who performs in the midclle of Bubbles's act, and thus primes the audience to demand more of Bubbles. of the opposition, neither woman is villainized in the process, surprising in Hence two radically different modes of performance- burlesque and bal­ terms of Bubbles. The contrast between the two women is even more striking let- and two radically different approaches to one's career-exploitation ver­ than that between Stella and Helen in The Wild Party, and once again, the sus artistic self-expression- are juxtaposed in the film. One of the achieve­ contrast is an element of the bond between them, not an obstacle. ments of the film is the fact that while Bubbles and Judy embody different poles As I have argued at various points throughout this book, the attention paid I42 Films for Women Made by Women Dance, Girls, Dance I43 to Arzner's sensitivity to gender tends to obscure how many of her films are a space as clearly delineated as Rolfe House in Working Girls, the community concerned with social class, and particularly with social class as it shapes wom­ of women is central throughout Dance) Girl) Dance. Indeed, the heterosexual en's aspirations in different ways. Dance, Girl, Dance is no exception. Bubbles intrigues of Dance) Girl) Dance are not only functions of class difference; the)' may become rich through her career, but she is definitely from a less than privi­ also mediate relationships between women. Jimmie Harris is, ultimately, a me­ leged background. A montage sequence approximately halfway through the film diator in the relationship between Bubbles and Judy, while Steven Adams as­ details her rise to fame; she· is referred to in newspapers and magazines as a sumes the role previously held by Madame Basilova in Judy's life. "burlesque" queen who takes Broadway by storm, and ticket prices go up ac­ Relationships between women are foregrounded in Dance) Girl) Dance cordingly. rs In her musical numbers, especially "Jitterbug Bite," Bubbles explic­ through the representation of dance as a form in which different desires inter­ itly confronts "class" (in the sense of upper-class values and pretensions) in sect. This complex representation of dance and a community of women can be order to dissociate herself from it, and in a striking scene early in the film, she seen as significant on another level, for the type of modern dance embodied by promises a showman that she does not possess an ounce of class. Certainly, class Adams's company is evocative of the way in which, several decades previous to (and the lack of it) here is meant to function primarily in terms of sexual appeal, Dance) Girl) Dance, women choreographers like Marion Morgan, Arzner's long­ but the point is that "class," for Arzner's heroines, is always simultaneously a time companion, developed a new approach, which became known as modern function of social class and sexuality. dance. Morgan did not work officially on Arzner's films after Manhattan Cock­ Judy is a poor, struggling dancer too, but her artistic aspirations suggest tail, but her influence echoes in a variety of ways, none more strongly than in the kind of "class" consistently mocked by Bubbles. Particularly interesting in Dance) Girl) Dance. I am not suggesting a direct, unmediated relationship be­ this respect is the rehearsal of the American Ballet Company that Judy watches. tween Morgan and this film, but I am suggesting that the values attributed to The performance begins with a traditional ballet performance (by a woman dance as both an expressive medium and a means to convey the complexities who bears a remarkable resemblance to Lucille Ball), and at one point the cur­ of the relationships between women make sense in light of Arzner's forty-plus tains behind her open to reveal a strikingly different kind of performance. years in the company of Morgan. Judy's face registers shock and surprise, then interest. The dance that follows is Arzner was brought in as director of Dance) Girl) Dance as a replacement ballet, but ballet inflected by urban sights and sounds- dancers dressed as for another director, and she immediately made changes in the script, which workers, street vendors, and office workers ( and, in an unfortunate stereotype, had been adapted by Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis from a story by novelist in blackface as a Harlem couple). This kind of dance challenges the rigid bound­ Vicki Baum (best known in Hollywood circles as the author of the novel Grand aries between "high" art and "low" art, between vaudeville and ballet, and Hotel). The most significant change made by Arzner was to transform the head between Bubbles and Judy. of the dance troupe from a man to a woman, from "Basiloff" to "Basilova." In If this "hybrid" form of dance breaks down the opposition between the the Slesinger/Davis script, he is called "Pops" by the dancers; his name is Vladimir kinds of dance favored by Bubbles and Judy respectively, then the awe-struck Basiloff, "Formerly Imp. Russ. Ballet," as the sign on his studio announces. 19 look bestowed upon the Bubbles look-alike by Judy as she watches her perform Arzner preserves the role of "Pops," but the crucial change in gender refocusses also suggests a more complicated and ambiguous relationship between the two the entire film. In the original screenplay, Steven Adams becomes a substitute of them than that of the stereotypical good girl/bad girl rivals and enemies. for Basiloff, with paternal authority passed from one man to another, in a con­ Bubbles bumps and grinds her way up the economic ladder, while Judy simul­ ventional female oedipal drama par excellence. In the original script, with Basil­ taneously pirouettes up the path of artistry. This scene also reminds the viewer off in charge of Judy's destiny, the relationship between dancer and manager that another thing both women share is a desire to climb out of the class into is entirely paternalistic, and the major movement is the change in Judy from which they were born. The heterosexual intrigues that pair Judy and Bubbles one kind of tutelage (Russian, classical) to another (American, modern). The with Jimmie Harris at various points, and Judy with Steven Adams at the film's paternalistic effect remains a constant from one "master" to another, and the conclusion, are significant less as pure romances than for the possibilities they script presents a female oedipal drama, in which the romantic figure replaces offer of class mobility. For the male romantic leads live in an entirely different the father figure. In Arzner's version, the female oedipal element is subverted; world, class-wise, than the women in the film. Like the working girls of the Basilova may be a nurturing figure vis-a-vis Judy, but she is hardly maternal in films discussed in chapter 5, Bubbles and Judy live in a world where social class the same stereotypical way that Basiloff is paternal. To be sure, Basilova is sup­ and gender always intersect. And even though the dance troupe may not occupy portive and encouraging of her.dancers; but with her slicked-back hair, necktie, 144 Films for Women Made by Women Dance, Girls, Dance 145 and overall butch appearance, she confuses gender expectations. In particular, in the room when Judy returns from a date with Jimmie, and, figuratively, Sally Basilova gazes longingly at Judy when she practices a new dance, thus appro­ remains asleep during the rest of the film. In the original script, Sally was an­ priating the desire that traditionally and stereotypically in Hollywood films is other woman paired with a man; in the film, she is a woman who serves to reserved for men. highlight the pairing of two women. Interestingly, once the heterosexual in­ Most significantly, this is yet another example of how, in the film, relations trigues are set into motion, Sally virtually disappears from the film. Yet her very between and among women are every bit- if not more- important than the presence is a tantalizing -'l'eminderof the bonds that connect women. entry of the female characters into the world of "coupledom" and heterosexual Ultimately, of course, the significance of Dance, Girl, Dance cannot be romance. And in the process, a figure from Arzner's own past is suggested- the measured in the literal terms of biography. Yet at the same time, I find it no name "Basilova" is surprisingly evocative of "Nazimova," both of them Rus­ coincidence that the most successful of Arzner's films is, at once, her most per­ sian, both of them emigres, both of them dancers. ' 0 Although I know of few sonal-personal in the sense that the world of performance, as represented in explicit biographical references in Arzner's work ( even the references to dance the film, is broad enough to include Bubbles and Judy and Basilova. Addition­ in Dance, Girl, Dance that are suggestive of the influence of Marion Morgan ally, the film suggests the costs and risks of feminine performance, for when are general, and not identified via a specific person), Basilova seems to be a Basilova dons a frilly hat to accompany Judy to her audition with the ballet strongly condensed figure of Nazimova, of Marion Morgan, and of Arzner company, she is immediately killed when she steps out into the street and is hit herself. Indeed, when Basilova is pictured with Judy, the effect is strikingly simi­ by a car. In other words, as soon as she assumes a feminine attribute, presumably lar to the numerous publicity photographs of Arzner pictured with female stars. in order to be more "presentable," she dies. In Christopher Strong, heterosexu­ Not only do Arzner and Basilova dress alike; they both exchange looks of desire ality is lethal; in Dance, Girl, Dance, femininity is lethal, at least for Basilova. and longing with their more "femme" companions. Consider, in this light, the famous scene of Judy's rebuke to her audience Hence, the change from Basiloff to Basilova brings relationships between that occurs near the conclusion of the film. Judy prepares to play the now-fa­ women center stage, and takes away much of the metaphoric baggage of Judy's miliar role of stooge, but something in her snaps. Instead of accepting her role, budding relationship with Steven Adams. The addition of Basilova is interest­ she defiantly moves to the front of the stage, crosses her arms in front of her, ing in other ways, as well. As the most explicitly butch female character in any and confronts her audience. Her speech is a stunning demonstration of the of Arzner's films, it is easy to see a parallel between the dance mistress and intersection of class and sexual politics, for Judy's critique is not just of men Arzner herself, not only in terms of their "looks," as mentioned above, but also who take women as sexual objects, but also of "dress suits" who take their as supposedly "masculinized" figures, attempting to function in a world made pleasure in the spectacle of vaudeville: to the measure of fleshpeddlers. Throughout Arzner's work, contrasts between and among women, whether butch or femme, function productively, not in Go ahead and stare. I'm not ashamed. Go on. Laugh! Get your money's worth. Nobody's going to hurt you. I know you want me to tear my clothes terms of absolute oppositions. off so's you can look your fifty cents worth. Fifty cents for the privilege of While the change from "Basiloff" to "Basilova" is the most striking change staring at a girl the way your wives won't let you. What do you suppose we from the original script, Arzner's particular touch is also present in the different think of you up here- with your silly smirksyour mothers would be ashamed ways a minor supporting character is changed. Arzner wanted to make the re­ of? And we know it's the thing of the moment for the dress suits to come lationship between Bubbles and Judy the center of the film, and so the role of '";11 and laugh at us too. We'd laugh right back at the lot of you, only we're paid Sally, another member of the dance troupe, is reduced. In the script ( as in the Ill' to let you sit there and roll your eyes and make your screamingly clever re­ 'Ill film), Sally lives with Judy and Bubbles. A subplot in the script pairs Sally with marks. What's it for? So's you can go home when the show's over and strut 'i:1 'i!I a baker who lives in the same building, and who offers Judy a job as his assistant. before your wives and sweethearts and play at being the stronger sex for a When Judy takes the job as Bubbles's stooge, the job goes to Sally, and Sally minute? I'm sure they see through you just like we do, and the baker become romantically involved. Sally remains in Arzner's film, but her primary function is to mediate the relationship between Bubbles and Judy. I see Judy's confrontation less as a challenge to the very notion of woman as Sally pokes fun at Bubbles in the opening scene of the film when Jimmie Harris object of spectacle than as the creation of another kind of performance. Of­ prefers Judy's company, and Sally is giving Judy homemade soup when Bubbles tentimes the scene is discussed as if the audience were exclusively male, which arrives with her offer of employment. The last time we see Sally, she is asleep it is not,-even though Judy addresses men in her speech. When the camera pans Films for Wimen Made by Women Dance, Girls, Dance

of the limits of Arzner's subversion of the classical Hollywood cinema. As Claire Johnston puts it, describing Judy's confrontation and what follows: This return of scrutiny in what is assumed within the film to be a one-way process, a spectacle to be consumed by men, constitutes a direct assult on the audience within the filmand the audience of the film, directly challenging the entire notion of spectacle as such. This break, a tour-de-forcein terms of Arzner's work, is nevertheless directly recuperated by the enthusiastic ap­ plause which follows, and the discourse of the woman, although it appears momentarily supreme, is returned to the arena of the spectacle.22 In the context of 1970s film theory, this kind of assessment of Arzner's work and of the feminist project in film was enormously important. Looking back • on that decade, it is as if the primary task was to claim the sexual politics of the look as crucial to any understanding of the classical Hollywood cinema and its alternatives. With the privilege of hindsight, as interpretations of this scene suggest, the understandings of 1970s feminist film theory seem momentously important, yet limited by two assumptions: of heterosexuality as a master code of meaning and representation, and of visual pleasure as a bad object. What I find remarkable about Arzner's films in general, and about Dance, Girl, Dance ' I in particular, is that they suggest both the importance of the theoretical claims of I97os film theory and their limitations. In its celebration of women and l~i performance, of female friendship, and of a diversity of female representation, ··,1t Dance, Girl, Dance reminds us, always, that there are women on both sides of :Jt, the stage, and that they take pleasure in looking at each other. li!i'

Figure 51. Judy (Maureen O'Hara} and Basilova (Maria Ouspenskaya)in Dance) Girl, Dance, 1940. MOMA Film Stills Archive.

the reactions of the audience to Judy's speech, the responses of women are quite clearly visible. Women squirm uncomfortably in their seats just as surely as men do, and when release occurs in the form of applause, it is a woman­ Steven Adams's trusty secretary-who initiates it. Arzner's view of perfor­ mance and her view of the relationship between subject and object were never 'I:!'" absolute; women may be objectified through performance, but they are also "'I empowered; men may consume women through the look, but women also watch and take pleasure in the spectacle of other women's performance. After Judy makes her speech, after the applause, Bubbles emerges from be­ hind the stage curtains to pick a fight with Judy onstage, much to the delight of the audience (indeed, the laughter which the fight provokes seems yet an­ other cathartic response to Judy's confrontation of her audience). 21 For 1970s feminist film theory, the applause and subsequent catfight were demonstrations